Four Minutes of Terror on the Last Frontier

Fifty years ago today, Alaska was hit by the second-strongest earthquake ever recorded.

On March 27, 1964, south-central Alaska was hit by an earthquake so powerful it wrought massive fissures, landslides, and seismic waves so strong they swayed the Space Needle in Seattle. Now believed to have been a magnitude of 9.2, it is considered the second-strongest quake ever recorded.​